And these are only the identifiable groups of filmmakers with a certain common affinity, it doesn't account for all the one-off films, the insular filmmakers, the oddities escaping all possible classifications...

10 septembre 2012

People believe what they want to believe, not necessarily what is the most probable, or the most likely...
But sometimes things are a little more complicated than what they appear, or slightly different when you change your vantage point, or more complete when you take the time to reflect.

You gotta wonder why anybody would put so much blind faith into their own personal subjectivity as if it was infallible, unique to one single person, characteristic to one's personality, superior to universal knowledge, objectivity... while in fact, experience proves that EVERYONE falls for the same tricks of the mind, optical illusions, that we are slaves to our whimsical taste for random reasons, and entertainment relies on collective conditioning to get programmed responses from us (because that's how our system, our senses, our brains are built). Why on Earth would you reject culture, knowledge, science, technique, canons, standards, education... when your subjectivity is prone to manipulation (voluntary or not)?

Entertainment is conceived to elicit predicted emotional responses in its audience. The fact that you respond strongly to certain cues is more indicative of an efficient job on the part of the creators than an intimate connection between you and the movie. What happens inside you is what your emotional capital allows to happen. The movie is merely the trigger there at the right place, at the right time.
The regular movie goer agrees to suspend disbelief, plays the game, falls for it, draws satisfaction from it, and asks for more. This relationship is purely subjective, and should remain that way.

But when you postures as a film critic, you CANNOT limit your "critical appreciation" at whatever you felt under the magic spell of dramatic manipulation... you need to snap out of it (possibly on second viewing), and observe from an outsider's perspective whether the tricks are fair or not to the viewer under dramatic hypnosis. Does a movie work only because it's impossible to escape its spell (i.e. hyper-editing that never allows you to judge your state of mind), or because its content is profound and its art is powerful? That's what a critic is useful for.
If you believe that a movie reviewer is only there to take the drug, get an automatic high, and tell everyone that this drug is the gate to Heaven... you're just another average movie goer, victim of marketing propaganda and dramatic manipulation. Everyone can do that if they are allowed to watch movies in advance and give that superficial feedback. A film critic is a little more special than that, or else the critic's opinion is worthless. Thus the importance of education, to bring an independent scrutiny to whatever filmmakers decide to put their audience through, to look through the tricks and ploys instead of blissfully falling for it without an ounce of evaluative ability.

What is traditional is something fully structured, corresponding to an expected form, purposefully produced to fit in this identified norm.

The Avant Garde is against anything tradition represents! (contrary to what Matthew Flanagan was arguing with me during the Unspoken Journal preparation) There is no such a thing as an "Avant Garde tradition", it is obviously a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. No artist from the experimental margin is trying to FIT IN any pre-established pattern, or repeat what their elders have established before them, nor do they want their work or body of work to be described as a conventional tradition. And they certainly don't want to see spawning a bunch of disciples turning their unique proposition into a serial assembly line production. What is experimental is meant to remain outside of the norm, and fail to become a tradition.

Surrealism is NOT a tradition, even if there might be a lot of wannabes who imitate the outer quircky look without understanding the particular unconscious process.

Soviet Montage is NOT a tradition, even if it had a very structured teaching but a short-lived following. There is no apparent continuity perpetuating the tenets of Soviet Montage in today's cinema or any period following the disappearance of the few Soviet Montage filmmakers. If whatever gimmicks passed on to the MTV fast editing, it's a watered down, simplified version, one that doesn't deserve to bear the name of a legacy. A distant formal influence on the mainstream formula is far from being a tradition. When Nolan or Greengrass will edit their films like Eisenstein we'll call that a tradition...

There is no tradition before or after Brakhage, or Kubelka, or Warhol, or Maya Deren... apart from the little affinity they develop around them, in a very limited circle of like-minded artists. There is a huge step between mere affinities and an established tradition.

This should be self-explanatory enough for anyone familiar with art history (even outside cinema).
There is one main branch in the history of all arts with trans-generational continuity and conventional tradition, where the mainstream develops, evolves and perpetuates. It's not necessarily the branch that innovates, invents, reforms the succession of fads and styles, on the contrary a tradition is rather conservative and protectionist with its own rules. Eg. : the tradition of classical narrative from antic tragedy to today's cinema.

In the margin of the comformist mainstream, there are many sub-branches of various free-form explorations, without rules, without standards, without conventions, without imitation, without respect for the past... this is the frontline of formal invention. The links from one generation to the next, or from one precursor to successors is NOT one of a traditional transmission, but if we want to be more precise and nuanced, one of partial stylistic influence or bifurcation or secession or antagonism or revolution or tabula rasa that characterises the NON-TRADITIONAL evolution of marginal art-cinema (umbrella term for all the various shapes and forms of non-mainstream cinema).

What is the direct traditional ancestry leading to David Lynch? Harmony Korine? Charlie Kaufmann? Miranda July? Matthew Barney? Todd Solondz? Eugene Green? James Benning? Charles Burnett? John Cassavetes? They are not completely sui generis of course, some of them largely borrow from the basics of narrative cinema, even most of the film grammar issued from Classical Cinema... but this is the most elementary technical substrate common to almost anything shot on film, due to the specific constraints of the medium and how the best intuitive solutions have been implemented to communicate with an audio-visual audience. This is what makes cinema cinema. These basics do not define the classical nature of mainstream cinema.
The classical norms (5 acts structure, shots-countershots, formated screenplays, standardized shots, reaction shots, symphonic scores, star system, contrasted stereotypes, family-friendly themes, heroic triumph, lyrical escapism, taylored dialogue...) are what unite all films made under the classical tradition, and sets apart films not made to honor and perpetuate this tradition (and clearly the names cited above do not rely on these traditional cues, nor do they repeat models from other traditions so blatantly).
A traditional filmmaker makes sure to be identified as belonging to the codes of a certain tradition. When a filmmaker doesn't follow cues, hit the conventional marks, respect the genre, then (s)he doesn't try to abid to the tradition, doesn't want to fit in, doesn't seek for his or her body of work to be filed under a pre-existing tradition!

How do you demonstrate any kind of tradition before or after Robert Bresson? Jean-Luc Godard? Luis Buñuel? Jacques Tati? Chris Marker? Chantal Akerman? Marguerite Duras? Straub-Huillet? Leos Carax? Roy Andersson? Michel Gondry? or even between eachother? How could there be ONE SINGLE TRADITION, the so-called "art cinema tradition" represent and define the stylistic identity of each one of them, of all of them as a whole? These figureheads obviously represent their own stylistic branches of cinema, and few of them formed disciples who faithfully carried on the exact values of their master in order to build up and maintain its identity in a traditional transmission. Yet they end up scooped up in the same bag, one indifferentiated bag called "art cinema" (like what David Bordwell purports). Why?

What differences can you make in cinema history if you disregard probably the most obvious one separating the TRADITIONAL evolution of film form within the classical mainstream establishment, and the NON-TRADTIONAL evolution of MULTIPLE (sometimes incompatible) film forms developed in the margin of the dominant film grammar.

04 septembre 2012

Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.

Sheena Iyengar studies how people choose (and what makes us think we're good at it).

We all think we're good at making choices; many of us even enjoy making them. Sheena Iyengar looks deeply at choosing and has discovered many surprising things about it. For instance, her famous "jam study," done while she was a grad student, quantified a counterintuitive truth about decisionmaking -- that when we're presented with too many choices, like 24 varieties of jam, we tend not to choose anything at all. (This and subsequent, equally ingenious experiments have provided rich material for Malcolm Gladwell and other pop chroniclers of business and the human psyche.)
Iyengar's research has been informing business and consumer-goods marketing since the 1990s. But she and her team at the Columbia Business School throw a much broader net. Her analysis touches, for example, on the medical decisionmaking that might lead up to choosing physician-assisted suicide, on the drawbacks of providing too many choices and options in social-welfare programs, and on the cultural and geographical underpinning of choice. Her book The Art of Choosing shares her research in an accessible and charming story that draws examples from her own life.

Malcolm Gladwell : Detective of fads and emerging subcultures, chronicler of jobs-you-never-knew-existed, Malcolm Gladwell's work is toppling the popular understanding of bias, crime, food, marketing, race, consumers and intelligence.

Malcolm Gladwell searches for the counterintuitive in what we all take to be the mundane: cookies, sneakers, pasta sauce. A New Yorker staff writer since 1996, he visits obscure laboratories and infomercial set kitchens as often as the hangouts of freelance cool-hunters -- a sort of pop-R&D gumshoe -- and for that has become a star lecturer and bestselling author.

Over the years, research has shown a counterintuitive fact about human nature: That sometimes, having too much choice makes us less happy. This may even be true when it comes to medical treatment. Baba Shiv shares a fascinating study that measures why choice opens the door to doubt, and suggests that ceding control -- especially on life-or-death decisions -- may be the best thing for us.

Baba Shiv studies how “liking” and “wanting” shape the choices we make, and what that means in the world of marketing.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.

Barry Schwartz studies the link between economics and psychology, offering startling insights into modern life. Lately, working with Ken Sharpe, he's studying wisdom.